Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Yes, yes, yes, it's all great, BUT will anything ever measure up to holding a physical book, smelling the newly bound pages, caressing the shiny colour illustrations, flipping through the chapters without getting middle-finger paralysis and stretching out comfortably to read for pure pleasure?

Granted, it's a great way of hunting down loads of information in a hurry, from many sources, and without even moving from your computer chair. I was wondering if this generation of cyberkids are getting the complete picture of the information they are seeking? In our day (said mother grundy!) we had to locate, for example, the actual country we were working with, trawl through atlases to find it (thus learning about others on our way) and choose relevant encyclopedias based on what we wanted to portray. Now, they just type the name in (if its misspelled it is automatically corrected!) and information comes pouring in. Not having done the research are they aware of what factors are important and unique or does the end justify the means? Are they rushing through life with a smattering of knowledge in the quest to get as much of it as possible? Could they be taking some information out of context? Sure, their assignments will be beautiful works of art with downloaded pictures, fancy texts, links to other sources, maps and amazing technological techniques.

Regarding research, however, this is an ideal way to have access to information from many different sources. Different peoples' ideas are instantly accessible which allows for more creative thinking and even better ideas to emerge.

It all boils down to provide the facilities and resources which suit the individual who can use it whichever way he chooses. Libraries are very good in this regard and the North Shore Libraries vision in particular is the epitome of catering to each users needs and wants, physically and emotionally.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I went into Technorati's "blog posts", "tags" and "blog directory" to search for "learning 2.0" as directed and yes, the numbers were totally different and continually rising. When I saw the words 'screencasts, skypecasts, podcasts, meta description etc I started to panic. I'm obviously not doing this correctly but I didn't think much of the first two and felt I was getting "blogged down" hahahahahaha.

However, I did enjoy the layout of the 'Blog directory'. This allows one to browse through the different topics in categories, for eg Entertainment, Lifestyle, Sports, Business, Technology etc.

I did enjoy Technorati's Popular feature showing little videos of world news as it happens! This actual footage seems much more real to me than merely reading about it in the newspaper.

To brighten up my entire day was a notice that kept coming up while I was toiling away which said" we are experiencing some search instability while we restore service - please bare with us"

I am still laughing.......even though I had lost 3 hours work because I had clicked on Publish and it wouldnt accept the curser as I didnt realise that one had to forcibly CLICK onto the wretched thing to get it to work - another valuable lesson learned!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Tagging seems good in theory but a little clumsy in these early stages.

Technorati was quite fun and useful for a quick whizz around the world looking for the latest news that comes up unbidden. I was pleased to find a window that enabled one to type in a specific search eg snow on Ruapehu and lo, information and even pictures about Ruapehu emerged!

Del.icio.us wasn't as useful as most people have been describing. Perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick but I find it quite difficult to understand and to manouvre it to find anything I'm interested in. I found the numerous sites (book marks?) that others had looked at but, of course, predominantly American based. Perhaps when time allows I will explore it further.

Monday, August 11, 2008

I think that Google Favourites is much easier to work than Bloglines regarding RSS feeds.Interesting exercise though. It really is very handy having all the feeds in one place without having to go into lots of different sites.I also found it more convenient to open up 2 tabs (internet connections) rather than continually going back to previous pages.

I keep getting caught with the new terminology: for example I keep wanting to create a "new Blog" instead of a "new Post"! You can only catch me 14 times..........